ETA Before and After the Carrero Assassination
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ETA Before and After the Carrero Assassination José A. Olmeda In December 1973 the Basque terrorist group ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) assassinated Admiral Carrero Blanco, the first and only prime minister in Franco’s dictatorship. Between 1946 and 1999 only three other Western heads of state or prime ministers were assassinated: US President John F. Kennedy (1963), Swedish prime minister Olof Palme (1986), and Israeli prime minister Yitzak Rabin (1995).1 Only the Carrero assassination was the work of a terrorist group. This resounding event supposedly helped to bring about the end of the authoritarian regime and became the signal achievement of the Basque nationalist organization. To assess this terrorist attack as a weapon of mass effect, this paper will examine the strategies ETA has adopted to distinguish itself within the Basque nationalist movement; its history of innovation in ideology, funding, and capabilities; how that innovation built up to the Carrero assassination; and the effect the assassination had on Spanish democracy and ETA's standing within the Basque nationalist movement. Although the profound psychological effects of the assassination allowed ETA to claim credit for the collapse of the Franco regime, it was unable to translate that credit into tangible progress towards its political goals. Introduction In 1958, a group of militant activists within the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ-PNV, founded in 1892) formed a breakaway faction seeking more radical policy goals and committed to outspoken, direct action against the authoritarian Franco regime. At its inception, this new organization, Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom, ETA), appeared to be generally unified behind a shared vision of a future independent, socialist Basque Country, to be achieved through ‘armed struggle.’ ETA is one of the oldest terrorist organizations in the Western world, operating for more than fifty years, with 858 assassinations and a history as a significant destabilizer of Spanish democracy. The Basque nationalist movement, like other nationalist movements around the world, has a history of internal fragmentation and numerous divisions and mergers. The movement’s organizational field represents an increasingly heterogeneous mix of organizations and aims. Its branches compete for resources, legitimacy, and the right to speak on behalf of Basque society. Some groups have been able to navigate this competitive environment successfully, while others that are less adept at formulating effective strategies have found themselves increasingly marginalized. As these marginalized groups lose public support, they become unable to induce the government to respond 1 In Spain several prime ministers have been killed before Carrero: Prim (1870), Cánovas del Castillo (1897), Canalejas (1912), Dato (1921); besides Maura (1904), Cambó (1907), Suárez (1977) y Aznar (1995) were object of grave terrorist atacks. Since 1999, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated by snipers in Belgrade in 2003. Political assassinations are much more frequent in the rest of the world; see Iqbar, Zorn 2006. For public reactions to the cases in the main text (Kennedy, Palme, Rabin), see, respectively, Sheatsley, Feldman 1964; Hansén, Stern 2001; and Vertzberger 1997. It could also be mentioned that in 1979, Lord Mountbatten, cousin to the British Queen, was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), who planted a bomb in his fishing boat, the Shadow V, at Mullaghmore, in County Sligo in the Republic of Ireland. Strategic Insights • Summer 2011 Volume 10, Issue 2 3 to their demands in any meaningful way. The formation and evolution of ETA must be understood within this context. Politically motivated groups have a wide spectrum of strategies to choose from in this competition for relevance. Using the terminology of McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001: 5), Basque nationalism is a clear example of contentious politics. According to this concept, there is an essential continuity between institutional and non-institutional politics; conventional electoral politics, protest, civil disobedience, and terrorism each count as one strategic choice among many of differing intensity. Groups ultimately choose one strategy or a mix of strategies based on their own capabilities and motivations, as well as those of other groups competing for power within the nationalist movement (Chenoweth 2010). Under this framework, ETA is a Basque nationalist organization that has chosen a violent strategy. The substantive issue is its attachment to Basque nationalism; it is not a nihilistic organization that cloaks itself in a political cause, but a Basque nationalist organization that practices terrorism to achieve its political ends. ETA’s formulated goals are: recovery of Basque culture and language, Basque secession from Spain, the annexation of the Navarre region of Spain to make the new state viable, and the incorporation of the Basque regions of France into the new state. All branches of the Basque nationalist movement share these ideological goals, irrespective of their tactics. ETA’s behavior should be analyzed in the context of the organizational population forming the nationalist movement, of which it is an integral part. ETA's Ideological Evolution One strategy ETA has used in its competition with other branches of the Basque nationalist movement is its endorsement of a diffuse Marxist-Leninist platform that serves to differentiate it from more traditionalist groups. From its founding until the fall of the Franco regime, ETA’s strategy was inspired by the Third World revolutionary wars. At ETA's first annual conference in May 1962, the group declared itself ‘a Basque revolutionary national liberation movement.’ ETA’s anti-colonialist rhetoric compared it to the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria and the Vietcong in Vietnam—movements that enjoyed much broader popular support than ETA. The analysis completely disregarded the fact that, in socioeconomic terms, the Basque country bore no resemblance to Third World countries. This lack of political realism and disconnection with reality has been a constant in ETA’s terrorist campaign. Under this strategy, terrorist actions were considered the trigger for an armed insurrection in which the Basque people would secede, achieving their independence from Spain. There was no mention of French Basque country at that time because France was its sanctuary and continued to be until the mid-1990s. The period of democratic transition appeared to represent the most appropriate time to implement this strategy, but after the consolidation of democracy and the establishment of autonomous communities, the potential for a popular uprising in the Basque country ceased to be credible, even for the most fanatical ideologues. ETA has added new ideological ingredients over time. For example, ETA adopted an anti-nuclear platform and in 1984 became the only European organization to successfully prevent the construction of a nuclear power station; the socialist government of Felipe González gave in to terrorist pressure after the assassination of the chief engineer in 1981 and the project director in Strategic Insights • Summer 2011 Volume 10, Issue 2 4 1982. In 1992, during the Urrats-Berri Process, the ETA political wing Herri Batasuna (HB) adapted to the disappearance of the Eastern bloc and altered its Marxist-Leninist ideology, redefining itself as “abertzale (patriot) and progressive left.” ETA considers institutionalized politics to be necessary in certain periods, but also considers them dangerous because they may lead to pliable, bourgeois-like attitudes, even among ETA’s own members. In the ETA-fostered internal reflection in HB that led to the Oldartzen Statement in 1996, ETA insisted upon the need to increase the offensive strategy and actions on different fronts (armed, civil disobedience, national construction, etc.) to avoid that risk. This risk became a reality for ETA Politico-Military, an offshoot of ETA, during the first years of the transition to democracy, when it decided to dissolve in 1982 after negotiating immunity with the UCD (Unión de Centro Democrático) government. ETA’s fears were confirmed by the split within Batasuna in the 1990s, which led to the current Aralar movement with a high number of abertzales from Navarra. ETA has never mentioned the possibility of giving up arms, and during the 1998 ceasefire it assumed the role of “guarantor of the process” that would eventually bring about the national and social liberation of a re-unified Basque Country. ETA thereby should gain control over moderate nationalist forces and their political institutions and regional security forces (Ertzaintza). This never mentioned possibility of giving up arms is a very important aspect, although it has not been fully exploited by those who establish the counter-terrorist guidelines in the political field2. The addition of ambiguous progressive and eco-leftist discourse has given ETA an increasingly populist image. However, at every critical moment for the organization, the old guard of extreme nationalists eventually triumphed and guaranteed that orthodoxy would prevail. Even the Basque anti-nuclear movement distinguished itself from similar movements worldwide by continuously emphasizing its Basque nationalist character. When ETA spearheaded violent protests against the proposed nuclear power plant, it was reluctant to admit independent Basque anti-nuclear groups into its broader political